How does Trump’s budget sit with rural Oklahomans?

Larry Long, director of the Durant Boys and Girls Club, helps serve hot dogs to children there. Long is unsure how he will stay open if President Trump’s proposed budget goes through.

Credit Cooper Neill / The Washington Post

The Washington Post recently paid a visit to rural Durant, Oklahoma, to investigate how Trump’s policies are sitting with rural Americans.

The town is still standing behind their choice of Donald Trump, though some cracks in their affection for the New York billionaire are becoming visible.

After years of state budget reductions, rural Oklahoma is now faced with the prospect of devastating Federal cuts to rural programs.

In Durant, Trump’s budget would eliminate funding for the local Boys and Girls Club. The local after-school arts program also relies on money from the National Endowment for the Arts, which Trump wants to eliminate. The county senior center could lose all of its funding, and the local Farm Service Center, which supports 1,200 local producers, is targeted in Trump’s budget.

But locals are keeping a stiff upper lip. “He won,” said one resident. “Let’s . . . see what he can do.”

President Trump unveiled his proposed budget last week, and some parts of America, like military centers, look to be big winners. But other areas, including rural regions that supported the President during his election last year, will be hit hard if the budget is passed.

The Kansas House approved a bill last week that would offer up to $100 million in income tax credits over five years to investors throwing resources into job-creating business developments in rural areas of the state.

As The Topeka Capital-Journal reports, provisions of the bill, which passed the House by a vote of 97-22, would be implemented starting in 2020. The amount of the tax credits issued wouldn’t exceed $20 million annually and investment companies could begin applying for eligibility after Jan. 1, 2018.

Blink while driving on Highway 34 east of Greeley, Colorado, and you might miss the former Great Plains town of Dearfield.

Abandoned towns from the early 20th century are far from unique on this stretch of plains. Withered storefronts and collapsed false-front homes are common. Boom and bust economics and harsh weather made it tough for turn of the century settlers to succeed long-term.

Not that there is evidence of political aspirations in this little town. It sits just off Cherokee Road, surrounded by treeless farmland, where it has been floundering for more than a century.

It’s unlikely that its founder, J.W. Pence, has any blood connection to Vice President Mike Pence – or that the 85 percent of Scott County voters who supported the Trump/Pence ticket did so because there was a town of Pence in their county.

Under President Trump’s proposed budget, High Plains cities that profit from air and rail services stand to suffer.

As The Garden City Telegram reports, Trump has suggested at least $2.4 billion in funding cuts, and included in that figure are subsidies for passenger rail service and rural commercial flights. For towns that are already isolated in many ways, like Garden City and Amarillo, these cuts could hurt.

Farm and rural advocacy groups say cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in President Donald Trump’s proposed budget would harm rural communities, at a time when many of them need an infusion of cash.

In what’s being called a “skinny budget” because it sets an outline and contains scant details, Trump’s proposal calls for a 21 percent reduction in the USDA’s annual discretionary spending, and lays out rationales for why some programs are either eliminated or scaled back, calling some “duplicative,” or “underperforming.”